Naruto: "Blaze Away Byakugan: This Is My Ninja Way" Review

Hinata saves the day.

I have to hand it to Naruto; this was definitely a better storyline than the last and for the majority it was entertaining. This episode concludes Naruto's search for the Bikochu beetle and while the ending was really disappointing (get to that later) the episode as a whole is a success.

When we last left the gang, Hinata was hanging on to dear life by a rope, and the rest of them were trapped in a cave with chakra sucking larvae. The group in the cave are immediately trapped and covered in bee wax. When they are asked to hand over Bikochu, Shino switches it around and says they can have if they can have Hinata back, because once the Bikochu hatches nobody can have it anyway.

The Kamizuri clan agrees, but of course when they get to the river Hinata is nowhere in sight. Thinking that Hinata is dead enrages Naruto and we see a cool scene where the Kamizuri bloody head, and his eyes turn red. It looked like Naruto was going to do some serious danger, until Hinata came and ruined thing. Hinata shows up and is bombarded with bees. Hinata then shows off a new jutsu the Protective Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms. It was interesting, it did look similar to Neji's, but Hinata moves a bit faster and the jutsu seems like it's a bit more accurate considering how small her target was. Shino explained to Naruto that Hinata has been training hard since Naruto has been away and that she wanted to work hard for everyone, most importantly Naruto.

It is a bit of a shame that Hinata training for Naruto seemed not to be addressed further by Naruto. He didn't seem very surprised that a girl would go out of her way to impress him. You would think Naruto would get that Hinata likes him, but it didn't seem to come up anymore during the episode.

Hinata has always been one of the most endearing characters on Naruto; you can't help but love her. So it's great to see that Hinata has made herself more perfect by finally managing to find her place within the team. It's just too bad we didn't get to see her use the gentle fist though, because the gentle fist fighting style is one of the best ones to watch.

The one thing that makes this episode and the arc in general from being too good was the ending. After taking care of the Kamizuri members, the Bikochu is finally hatching, but Sasuke's headband becomes lost after Naruto used a Rasengan. Naruto finds the headband, but passes gas causing it to be the scent that the Bikochu smelled, thus ending the mission as a failure.

This was such a goofy ending that it totally takes away any of the importance of the whole arc. The characters themselves didn't even seem too mad about it. You would think that Naruto would be upset at this being his last opportunity to find Sasuke. Sure Sakura was mad, but we all know it was in a joking type of way. I have to say up until the very end it was actually a good last couple of episodes, it's just so sad that this ending brings the whole arc down a tad.